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November 13, 2011

ATL Eats Beat: Nov. 2011

BLT Steak's private dining room for the Boucherie Dinner

Chefs on TV

Several of our local chefs are going positively telegenic. Chef Art Smith of the newly opened Southern Art in the InterContinental Hotel Buckhead is teaming up with Lady Gaga for her first ever Thanksgiving special Nov. 24 on ABC. Seems the lady, like Oprah, is a big fan of Smith’s fried chicken but for the holiday special, Smith will be cooking up a Turkey-day take on a Southern classic: deep-fried turkey and waffles “A Very Gaga Thanksgiving” will also feature an interview of her by Katie Couric and eight musical performances, including a duet with Tony Bennett.

Neighborhood eatery Park’s Edge, in Inman Park, is also getting the TV treatment. It will receive a full-on restaurant makeover as part of hot-tempered Chef Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares series, airing Friday nights on Fox. Stay tuned to see if menu items like lobster mac’n’cheese, grilled peach and burratta salad, pork belly with white bean cassoulet and apple cobbler in a jar make the cut. Not to fear Ramsay did not touch the resto’s award-winning brunch but we hear he did a major revamp to dinner, desserts and cocktails. The Park’s Edge episode is slated to air sometime in December.

New Arrivals

Chef Pano Karatassos

Beloved classic Pano’s is making a return to Buckhead…but not as originally planned, at the St. Regis. Instead, the swanky restaurant and lounge will be re-instituted in the upper level of the 103 West event space in the fall of 2012. Bill Johnson has signed on as architect with Pano Karatassos, junior, the extremely accomplished chef of Kyma, at the helm. No surprise, the projected menu will be Mediterranean and fish-friendly, though we are sure there will be a few chops on the menu as well.

Baci by Café at Pharr, a new iteration of the beloved Café at Pharr, is slated to open this month at the new Town Brookhaven center for lunch and dinner service. The standard chicken salad and homemade breads will be on the menu, but it also takes a more global turn with Angry Mussels with bacon and Serrano chiles, Hong Kong style Chilean sea bass, a Baci burger and a Kobe beef rib-eye.

Carnivore Cravings

It seems Atlantans can’t get enough of the meat market. Park 75 at the Four Seasons hotel was revamped into a modern steak house last year and now are offering an off-menu special cut each week. You have to know to ask for it. Past specials have included a 20 oz. New Zealand elk rack to a more domestic veal chop grilled over pecan wood and topped with huckleberry brandy sauce. The secret password to get your mitts on this meat: ask your waiter “ What’s rare?”

Spotted Trotter goods

Spotted Trotter, the charcuterie purveyor beloved by esteemed local chefs, now has a bricks-and-mortar shop in Kirkwood for those who don’t care to hunt him down at local farmer’s markets at 1610 Hosea L. Williams Drive. Stock up on gruyere, wild mushroom and pork crepinettes; brand rabbit boudin; sweet hot fennel sausage and toasted black pepper and sorghum syrup salumi at this boutique charcuterie created by Kevin Ouzts (a French Laundry graduate). Thespottedtrotter.com

New executive chef Cyrille Holota (Joel, FAB) has wasted no time bringing his special Boucherie Dinners to BLT Steak at the W Atlanta. Each month has featured a different type of protein, with the whole animal cooking series concluding this Thursday Dec. 1 with a focus on lamb. Highlights of the menu include a Mediterranan lamb tenderloin with fresh harissa and couscous and a herb-crusted lamb rack with shallot confit and thyme lamb jus. Dinners are $65 per person with an additional $20 for wine pairings. Call 404.577.7601 for reservations.

In other meat-centric news, chef Joshua Hopkins will be leaving Abattoir. No word yet on where he might land.